Journalistic skills are key to effective audio slideshow storytelling

It’s now easy and popular to create an audio slideshow, but it takes training and expertise to create a good audio slideshowstory. To best leverage the narrative power of audio slideshows, one needs both production and journalistic skills:

production skills: how to use audio recording devices; how to use a camera; how to use audio editing program; how to use slideshow authoring program

journalistic skills: how to find a story that engages audience; what questions to ask and how to ask questions; what photos to take and how to frame photos; how to arrange and edit photos in the slideshow

In Audio Slideshow Storytelling, a free online course I offered this summer, course contents are centered around these two skills and participants were asked to work on a final project – a profile story – by following these guidelines:

Mandatory requirements: slideshows not meeting both requirements are considered incomplete

a minimum duration of 90 seconds, but not longer than three minutes

a minimum of 18 photos

Production guidelines: A slideshow that fails to meet at least half of the eight guidelines is considered incomplete

Samuel Okocha, a course participant from Nigeria, created a profile story about an artist who uses disposable materials for his artwork. Samuel won a free copy of Soundslides Plus, a $69 value, provided by the software vendor in sponsorship of this free course. Samuel’s slideshow is being embedded below:

Related

About Mu Lin

Dr. Mu Lin is a digital journalism professional and educator in New Jersey, United States. Dr. Lin manages an online marketing company. He also manages MulinBlog Online J-School (www.mulinblog.com/mooc), a free online journalism training program, which offers courses such as Audio Slideshow Storytelling; Introduction to Social Media Marketing; Writing for the Web; Google Mapping for Communicators; Introduction to Data Visualization; Introduction to Web Metrics and Google Analytics.